MoMA, New York Public Library, Google, and Twitter: our 2014-2015 projects, exhibitions, publications

The last 24 months have been a very busy and productive time for our lab.

In 2014, we created six new projects focusing on analysis, visualization, and interpretation of large cultural data. Four of them were installations commissioned by New York Public Library, Google Zeitgest 2014 conference, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, and a media festival in Sao Paulo. We were also commissioned to create a visualization for Wired August 2014 issue.

Our projects were featured in hundreds of publications including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, The Guardian, CNN, PBS, NBC, LA Time, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlantic, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Wired, Slate, Fast Company Co.Design, Spiegel, Le Monde, Buzzfeed, Gizmodo. For the full list of media coverage, see http://manovich.net/index.php/press

We were lucky to work with the amazing team of data and media designers: Moritz Stefaner, Daniel Goddemeyer, and Dominikus Baur. Moritz is the creative director and visualization designer for both Selfiecity and On Broadway, and we are very grateful for all his work and dedication to these projects.

Twitter Data Grant:

Out of 1300 international teams who applied, only six teams received the Twitter Data Grant. ">Twitter Data grants. As the part of the grant, Twitter gave us access to every tweeted image worldwide for 2011-2014. We will be publishing the results of our analysis of this amazing dataset in 2015-2016.

Culture Analytics Institute

Lev Manovich is a member of organizing team for Culture Analytics Institute (March 6 - June 10, UCLA). 115 leading academic and industry researchers who will be speaking at 4 Institute workshops.

Commissioned projects:

An interactive installation that visualizes multiple layers of data and images collected along the 13 miles of Broadway spanning Manhattan. Data includes 660,000 Instagram images, Twitter posts and images, Foursquare check-ins, Google Street View images, 22 million taxi pickups and drop-offs (2013), and economic indicators from the U.S. Census Bureau. Artists: Daniel Goddemeyer, Moritz Stefaner, Dominikus Baur, Lev Manovich. The installation is on view at the New York Public Library as part of the exhibition Public Eye: 175 Years of Sharing Photography, December 12, 2014 - January 3, 2016. Interactive web app is available at On Broadwaywebsite.

A site-specific project for a media facade in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Instagram selfies from Sao Paulo are animated to reveal patterns in self-representation. One animation presents the photos organized by estimated age, another by gender, and the third by the degree of smile. Artists: Jay Chow, Lev Manovich, and Moritz Stefaner. SelfieSaoPaulo was on view on the media facade, located at the building FIESP / SESI and Alameda das Flores (Avenida Paulista 1313), every night for the duration of the 2014 SP_Urban Festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil. June 9 – July 7, 2014.

Self-initiated projects:

The first project to analyze the use of Instagram during a social upheaval. Using computational and data visualization techniques, we explored 13,208 Instagram images shared by 6,165 people in the central area of Kyiv during 2014 Ukrainian revolution (February 17 - 22, 2014). Team: Lev Manovich, Jay Chow, Alise Tifentale, and Mehrdad Yazdani, with a guest essay by Elizabeth Losh. Released 10/07/2014.